My journeys - works from Jens Olesen's Collection

19 January - 22 April 2019

With the current exhibition, our focus is to communicate how there is a special focus on art from several Asian countries: China, Mongolia, North Korea and South Korea in Jens Olesen's art collection.

Together with Jens Olesen's brother, art historian Lars Olesen, we have been allowed to make a selection from the huge art collection created by a traveled businessman and art collector.

There are thus 60 selected works - mainly painting, but also some sculptures, which are now displayed. With his kind and big lending, Jens Olesen generously shares the love of art that has followed him throughout his life. As Mads Damsbo expresses this in his interview with the art collector:

"Like the runner in the woods, who have both the freshness in the clothes and the pebbles from the gravel on the trail in the shoes, Jens [Olesen] has collected art over the years. It has sort of been whirling up around him in the meeting with the artists and along his many travels. There has been a taste, a direction, the painting has a special place at Olesen. But it's the meeting with the world, with people and with the artists, it's all about. "

Jens Olsen has, also with his family, traveled a lot in Asia and that has made significant marks in his art collection. This is unique and has never been shown and communicated to the public before, whereas he is more famous for the large collection of Cobra-artist works. The exhibition thus reveals the existence of a previously unknown side of an important private Danish art collection with international vision.

There will also be works of Western European and South American artists in the presentation, for example. French Arman Fernandez, German Günther Förg and Andreas Golder, which he has acquired on his travels around the world. Similarly, works of Uruguayan Ignacio Iturria, and Danish artists such as Kirkeby, Tal R., Kvium and others. Nearly 40 artists are represented in the selection, several of them thus with several works.

It is a very rare opportunity for an insight into a private collector's art collection and we are very proud of the confidence that Jens Olesen shows with this generous lending.

A catalog with Mads Damsbo's interview with Jens Olsen and a text by Chinese art historian Johnson Chang is planned to be published in connection with the exhibition.